Central Ohio school districts find ways to screen out undesirables

Sunday

Aug 18, 2013 at 12:01 AMAug 18, 2013 at 10:43 AM

Before they get past the front desk, visitors to Dublin schools will be required to swipe their driver's licenses through a machine that searches for their information in a national database of sex offenders. Hits will be handled case by case, a district spokesman said.

Collin Binkley, The Columbus Dispatch

Before they get past the front desk, visitors to Dublin schools will be required to swipe their driver’s licenses through a machine that searches for their information in a national database of sex offenders.

Hits will be handled case by case, a district spokesman said.

The technology, which cost the district $34,000 and also prints visitor badges, is rarely used in central Ohio schools but is an example of new efforts to monitor who has access to students.

At a new Hilliard school building that will be open in the evenings, students will need to enter an identification code to get in.

In the Westerville school district, all students must carry identification cards with them this year, and some schools require students to wear their IDs. That helps teachers ensure that outsiders aren’t in the school, officials said.

Dublin schools began planning for the new ID-swiping technology after the Newtown, Conn., school shootings last year, along with buzzer systems that now stop visitors at the entrance to every school building.

The city of Dublin drew fire from some this year when it installed the same ID-swiping devices at public pools and a public recreation center, with critics saying the technology perpetuates an irrational fear about sex offenders. The Ohio attorney general’s office says 18 sex offenders live in the school district.

But in districts across central Ohio, school officials said narrowing access to buildings makes students safer, even if the safeguards are sometimes less-convenient for parents.

In the past, many districts required parent volunteers to get criminal-background checks only if they might be alone with students. But more have adopted policies in recent years expanding that requirement to all volunteers.

At least one Dublin school told parents that all volunteers need to be checked for criminal backgrounds starting this school year, although district spokesman Doug Baker said it isn’t a district policy. The New Albany-Plain school district is considering widening its requirements.

“We’ve done it for those volunteers that are overnight and for off-campus-type activities,” New Albany-Plain spokesman Patrick Gallaway said. But at a recent meeting, the district school board began discussing across-the-board checks.

Districts including Worthington, Hilliard and Groveport Madison already require checks for all volunteers, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus has long required volunteers to be screened and attend a three-hour class on sex abuse.

Some districts pick up the cost of the checks, such as Worthington, which paid about $13,000 last school year to screen all volunteers. Hilliard hires a company to perform checks and charges parents $9 each if they have lived in Ohio for at least five years. Otherwise, it’s $18.

John Murphy, a Commercial Point police officer with a side business that offers “mobile” background checks, has expanded his company by catering to parents in districts that don’t cover any of the cost. Each year, Olentangy parent groups hire him to bring his computer to their meetings and fingerprint volunteers for $55 each.

When Olentangy began requiring more background checks last school year, there was only a slight drop in volunteers at Liberty Tree Elementary, said Elyse Weiss, the president of the parent-teacher group.

Dublin parent Jane Doyle, who is president of the parent-teacher group at Indian Run Elementary, said she isn’t bothered by the new ID-swiping machines and mandatory background checks. Parents with no criminal background have no reason to fret the measures, she said, and she believes students will be safer.

But Doyle, a mother of two daughters, is still waiting to see how other parents will react.“I hope it doesn’t drop volunteering,” she said. “I don’t think parents are 100 percent aware of what’s going on.”